


Trying to Figure out This Life

by mildred_of_midgard



Category: 15th Century CE RPF, Historical RPF, I'm With You - Avril Lavigne (Song), Norse Religion & Lore, Wodan's Children - Diana Paxson
Genre: Alternate Universe - Reincarnation, F/M, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-31
Updated: 2019-05-31
Packaged: 2020-03-29 16:22:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 990
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19023559
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mildred_of_midgard/pseuds/mildred_of_midgard
Summary: Awaiting execution, hoping for a rescue, Joan of Arc remembers her previous lives.





	Trying to Figure out This Life

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by the lyrics to "I'm With You", Avril Lavigne.

_Rouen, 1431_

The rain saw gray day turn into night, and relentless, it kept on coming. The chill it brought penetrated into every corner of the city. For prisoners, there were no such luxuries as fires or warm cloaks. Jeanne wrapped her arms around the bodice of her gown, hugging herself tight, but she hardly noticed her own shivering. Her ears were straining for a sound, any sound. She had single-handedly delivered France from the stranglehold of the English, put a king on the throne. Surely someone was coming. If Charles was too weak, then surely Yolande.

Hour after hour, the noiseless night taunted her. No thundering hooves, no trumpet, no clash of arms signalling a rescue. Not even a shout.

Nothing but her English guards, with the occasional grumble breaking their morose silence. The weather was getting to the _goddam_ s too.

Still shivering, blaming the cold, Jeanne told herself again and again that she wasn't afraid, that she wouldn’t be afraid. Only terribly, terribly lonely. It was like this in every life, she reminded herself. A king who wasn't worthy of her, but a hero who was.

It was her hero she was listening for, wondering who he would be this time and where they would go. This century was not kind to women who wanted to choose their lovers. To be taken seriously at all, she’d had to guard her maidenhood like gold. And here she was in prison, all the same.

When she wasn’t dreaming of rescue, she was dreaming of ecstasy. Before she was ever married to a weakling who bequeathed his kingdom to the Romans, Boudica bore two daughters given to her by a man that history might forget, but she never would.

What history remembered was her bloody vengeance for those daughters. Even the Burgundians in Brynhild’s day knew of it. Jeanne wondered if her own Burgundians did, when they took her prisoner.

An age later, Sigurd had come to her, rescuer and suppliant at once. A warrior who wanted to be more than a warrior, he came seeking help from a wise woman. For one brief, rapturous instant, they’d been invincible together, sharing battle and bed without fear. It was in that life that she’d learned to speak to the gods, and to make them hear her.

Now the gods had different names, Saint this and and Saint that, but the young warrior witch knew them all the same. They brought her glory and exacted a terrible price, each time. Yet each time, she answered the call. She wouldn't trade any of her lives for the blandness of safety. She feared a broken spirit more than death or rape.

Indecisive, Jeanne fingered the fabric of the doublet and hose her captors had so considerately left her. Put them on, and give her enemies the sign they wanted that she was a relapsed heretic, ripe for execution. Leave on her woman's gown, and lose the virginity these men prized so highly. Without that token of her obedience to God's will between her legs, she wasn't a witch, she was a whore. _Jeanne la Puzel_ , she'd heard one guard mutter already, eyeing her.

She was dead either way, without a rescue. After all her failed escape attempts, they’d tightened the watch on her until she knew she’d never make it out on her own.

Outside, the rain continued to fall, indifferent. No messenger arrived, bearing the news that Charles had engineered her release.

It wasn't the worthiness of the king, she reminded herself. It was her own deeds that mattered. Her courage and strength of will earned her a place in Valhalla even when she lost; how much more when she won?

Grimly, she lifted her head and stared straight ahead, proud that even in the bleakness of this place and time, she'd found a way to make her own rules. If her choices led to a funeral pyre, well, at least they were her own.

As Brynhild, she remembered, she'd had to wait until that last moment of utter despair, already ringed by fire and crying out to the gods, before Sigurd rode in. Maybe that was what this life held in store for her as well. There was no point in waiting any longer for Charles, that was for certain. Time to make up her own mind. Gown, or hose?

* * *

Defiant to the end, wearing the same garb that she'd ridden to war in, Jeanne stood with her hands tied behind her, a mound of coals beneath her, and a pillar at her back. They meant to burn her so thoroughly that no relics remained for her supporters to claim. So be it. A witch knew better ways to deal with death.

As the flames crept toward her feet and her skin began to glow painfully, Jeanne gasped at a sudden blast. So loud it could have been Gabriel’s trumpet at the End of Days, it seemed to split the air around her. Charles would have timing this bad. Was it him after all?

She waited, each second an eternity. It could have been nothing but a hunting horn from the countryside, mocking her with empty hope. But at this time of year? Jeanne whipped her head from side to side, peering every which way through watering eyes, but the gathering smoke was too thick.

The blast sounded again, echoing down from the heavens. None of the spectators moved, except to get a closer look at the burning heretic.

Jeanne knew then that it was not any earthly sound she heard. She closed her eyes. Had the Wild Hunt come for her? Maybe she had finally earned the right to ride beside Odin. If she wasn’t mad, hearing things. Did Sigurd ride with Odin now?

Jeanne tried to reach toward her savior, but her hands were bound.

"Come to me," she cried. "I don't know who you are, but I'm with you."

**Author's Note:**

> I wrestled far too long with the question of how to spell the names. I eventually went with Anglicised Norse spellings because I like them best, not because I'm basing my version of events only on Norse mythology or because these spellings would be historically accurate.


End file.
